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Remembering Pioneer 10
Daniel Goldman writes "Twenty one years ago today, Pioneer 10 became the first spacecraft to leave our solar system, by crossing the orbit of Neptune (which was then the farthest planet from the Sun). Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to enter the asteroid belt, the ring of giant rocks beyond Mars. It survived and zoomed on to Jupiter in late 1973, where it became the first spacecraft to take close-up photographs of the storms on the giant planet's surface. After Jupiter, it kept going, collecting data on the particles and radiation it encountered. More info about Pioneer 10 at Wikipedia."
Twenty one years ago today, Pioneer 10 became the first spacecraft to leave our solar system, by crossing the orbit of Neptune (which was then the farthest planet from the Sun).
I guess that depends on where you define the edge of the solar system. What about the Oort Cloud? What about that tenth planet we can never seem to pin down?
Because the last time we did this story it was 20 years ago today.
Happy New Pioneer 10 Year everybody. Whoooooooooo!
KFG
...when it returns as V'Ger. ;)
Find out about the Lexus Rx400h Hybrid!
We'll soon be dealing with an unstoppable force known as P'Eer!
Long Live Pioneer 10. It is amazing to think that a human creation has traveled so far and survived so long.
/Rant
Built back when things were made to last, Pioneer 10 (according to WiKi) was still used as a training platform just a few years back.
And the two Mars rovers are a reminder that smart people still are working for NASA, as they have out lasted anyone's prediction.
Makes me proud
--sig fault--
What's truly amazing about Pioneer and all the other satellites of the era is that they have lasted so far beyond their expected lifetimes. If I remember correctly, Pioneer was supposed to die after reaching the outer planets, but it died in late 2003. The work they do at NASA and especially JPL (where most of the unmanned devices are designed and built) is truly impressive, and even more so considering there usually aren't any second chances available (with the noteworthy exception of Hubble).
Funny I was just reading about Pioneer a day ago. The Pioneer Plaque is very interesting to think about... just imagine an extraterrestrial life finally reading this plaque. I can't ever imagine what a super-intelligent race could do with it.
Just think about it. We think of aliens as being these super intelligent creatures capable of time travel and the ability to travel at the speed of light. We are probably wrong. There are probably races that are millions of times more advanced then or there are races that are millions of times dumber. Then there is that change that the human race is the only one in existence, but then you can start thinking about Multiverse.
It's absolutely mind-boggling about some of the ideas out there. The scary thing is that the reality might be exactly what sci-fi authors are telling us.
Did they use CCD's? How did cameras on board space probes work back then?
.. I think Voyager did use CCD's.
Anyone know
No, they meant that Pluto has an eccentric orbit, which crosses the orbit of Neptune. Between 1979 and 1999, Pluto was the 8th planet from the sun, and Neptune the 9th.
Everyone knows that pioneer 10 was destroyed by Klingons in some harmless target practice!
The edge of the solar system is the heliopause. Pioneer 10 has not gotten close to that. The honor of the first man-made object to leave the solar system belongs to Voyager 1, launched over 25 years ago.
Um... hello? Have you not heard of Cassini? Sure, there may have been some fly-bys of Saturn and its moons in the past, but certainly none that are going to be spending a few years in the area. If the latest group of pictures from Phoebe are any indication...
Troll.
... first spacecraft to enter the asteroid belt, the ring of giant rocks beyond Mars. It survived ...
Contrary to nearly every science fiction chase scene, the asteroid belt in orbit around our star is hardly what anyone would call dense. It "survived"? Heck, it'd have to try pretty hard to hit a rock out there!
Of course, the most important contribution of Pioneer 10 to fundamental physics may be the Pioneer Anomaly : http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/gr-qc/9808081
I guess attempting to fly through a comet's tail and return samples to earth isn't very impressive. Nor is landing a probe on a comet. Or on a moon of Saturn. Or taking samples of a near-earth asteroid and returning them to earth.
There is plenty going on. Not as much as I would like, but still a lot more than most people think.
I guess there are a few professional rocket scientists hanging out here (and plenty of amateurs...), so now is a good time to ask a question that has bugged me for a long time:
:)
Has any consensus been reached over what has caused the unexpected change in velocity of the Pioneer 10 and 11, Ulysses and Galileo probes? Remember this?
Since this was announced I've done some regular googling to see if this has ever been adequately explained. There are plenty of pages out there with plenty of theories, but most of the sites discussing this also have theories about things like zero-point energy generators, perpetual motion machines, that sort of stuff... Hardly the sort of thing that smells of proper scientific method.
Other theories include drag from dust, Changing velocity of light and "tired light redshift" (what the HELL is THAT???)
I have found this paper, which looks very interesting, and much more authoritive, but its is unfortunately waaay over my head!
There is still a lot of discussion on this topic, can any astrophysics lurking here comment? Are we looking at a modification of gravity? Does this tie in with dark matter/energy?
Ta
I don't mean to sound dirty in such a respectable forum, but I couldn't help but notice that the Pioneer plaque has much more attention given to the male genitalia than the female genitalia?
Probably would've been a bush considering the period. Maybe none of the NASA plaque designers were good at curly hair.
And in 50 years from now, some space-tourists will play catch-up with it, just because they're curious what became of it
A real quick and dirty gives me about 12,000 miles/second. A pretty good clip, but not yet really boogying. Give it another five years before you have to worry about the intergalactic traffic cops handing out a ticket.
Assuming the dust mote doesn't get it first.
KFG
Dude, have you taken a look at Earth lately? If I was a super intelligent alien with 80,000 years greater technology at my fingertips, a galactic slum infested with psychotic and homicidal creatures would probably be dead-last on my "places to visit" list. ;)
No offense to my fellow earthlings.
Hi - why can't NASA try to use some nearer spacecratt (Cassini, Mars Express etc.) to communicate with Pioneer 10?
Even after the many mishaps (>$40 mil lost) due to the use of nonmetric measures, NASA still includes the nonmetric measures (miles and mph) in their descriptions. That is stupid.
s /p ioneer/PNStat.html
http://spaceprojects.arc.nasa.gov/Space_Project
No, it's more like an address. Basically, the lines represent the period of a bunch of different pulsars and their distance from our sun. The idea is that if E.T. happens to know three (I think) or more of these pulsars, and happens to read binary, he might go "aha!" and find us and steal our water and/or women.
Your absolutely correct. It gets down to the basic problem in space science and that is how to market information to the public. What gets me is that I can turn on the discovery channel and watch hour after hour of Palio this and Volcano that (all very important areas of research, I'm not dogging them). Why arn't there more programs made that describe the current NASA missions, design and development phases, the mission it self. Some of the great science that comes from it etc.. I guess it comes down to the fact that the Fe/O ratio is just not as cool as a Raptor claw.
"Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations"
The spin-flip transition has a wavelength of 21cm. Next to the people is the binary number 8, 8x21=168cm, the approximate height of a human. Also this can be used to make sure the scale is correct, because Pioneer is show to scale behind the humans.
The period of the spin-flip transition is around 1420(Mhz)^-1. The off burst pattern is actually a map of the Sol system's location in relation to 14 pulsars, whose periods are compaired to that of molecular hydrogen's transition by way of binary. By knowing this the recieving society is supposed to look in the sky and find some of the pulsars with those frequencies and be able to locate us.
Pretty nifty use of math and science I think, but perhaps including an example of binary counting would have been a good idea. I forget what the binary near the planets signifies, either distance or mass, I can't recall which. Probably distance, because that diagram is not to scale.
Sedna's not a planet.
For that matter, a lot of people don't think of Pluto as a planet either.
"If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living."
- Seneca
I remember this date, because NASA set up a 900 number celebrating the event where you would call and listen to a little talk about how far Pioneer 10 had travled and then you could hear the "beep beep noises" coming from beyond the orbit of Neptune.
My grandmother dialed the number for me (on a rotary dial phone!) and got mad since I listened to it twice, fearing it would charge her twice as much.
This comment is so far down, I'd be surprised if noticed by anyone.
There are two kinds of fool. One says, This is old, and therefore good. And one says, This is new, and therefore better.
The woman of the Pioneer 10 plaque (check the Wikipedia link) has no genitals.
Alien biologists will have a hard time figuring out how human reproduction works.
Then when the aliens eventually realize that the genitals were omited for the woman (but not for the man) alien sociogists and psychologists will have even harder time explaining why we did this.
Actually, at that time, it passed both, so they're both right. Some people may not know that pluto's orbit is not centred around the sun, but offset, so that it occaisionally crosses inside neptune's orbit.
Mouse, Mice. Goose, Geese. Moose... Moose?
Mercury is not iffy! The Messenger Spacecraft is on track for an August launch this year.
$#!^ happens, but why does it always have to happen to me???